This book is a collection of eight
(partially revised and enlarged) papers most of which were originally
delivered at a session (under the title "New Directions in Classical
Archaeology") of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) Conference at
Southampton in 1992. The aim of TAG, to which the authors have contributed
with uneven success, is -- in the words of the General editor's
Preface -- "to raise the profile of discussion about the theories of the
past" (xiv).

After Colin Renfrew's Foreword (xvi-xviii) and the
editor's Introduction (1-5) -- which both deal with the still uneasy
relationship between more traditional Classical Archaeology and a more
theory-based New Archaeology as presented in the papers of this book --,
Jonathan M. Hall explores the "Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Iron
Age of Greece" (6-17). The debate on this issue goes back to the 19th
century (K. O. Müller); over time, there developed a kind of
dichotomy
between the "primordialist view" (regarding ethnicity as "innate,
inescapable and deterministic") and the "instrumentalist view" (holding
that ethnicity is but a transient strategy adopted by groups for ulterior,
often economic, purposes), a view shared by most classicists today, who
regard 'ethnic' groups merely as linguistic communities with a number of
common customs. Hall wants to show that an ethnic group is rather a
conscious social construction than an "objective" category; therefore
archaeological artefacts have to be seen not as defining criteria of
ethnicity, but rather as indications of a consciously projected one. To
confirm this thesis, Hall looks into the archaeological profile of the
Argolid, where, e.g., the status of gods seems to vary markedly from
region to region (13); even within e. g. the Argive plain there are
differences that prove that this culture was not so homogeneous as it
seemed.

In "Challenging Preconceptions of Oriental 'Barbarity' and
Greek 'Humanity'" (18-27), Louise Steel deals with "Human sacrifice in the
ancient world". She looks at equivocal evidence for Minoan scapegoat
sacrifices (19), for "Suttee" sacrifice at Lefkandi and on Cyprus (23) and
at somewhat better evidence for "retainer burials" on Cyprus (23-26). More
problematic seems the section (19-22) about human sacrifice in Phoenician
and Carthaginian society, mentioned by several ancient authors (as well as
in the Old Testament), but supported by little archaeological evidence. S.
rightly notes that there is little proof of sacrifices of the first-born;
on the other hand, she takes for granted that there were Moloch-sacrifices
until as late as the destruction of Carthage 146 B.C. Observing that the
tophet of Carthage has its greatest extension in the 4th century, S.
concludes that human sacrifice, far from being characteristic of more
primitive societies (and gradually displaced by animal sacrifice),
actually became more frequent as Carthage became more urbanised and
civilised (26). One may, however, still doubt whether the tophets are
unquestionable evidence for human sacrifice; moreover, one should take
into account that every ancient report about this practice was written by
Carthage's fiercest enemies. Several scholars1 today argue that the human sacrifices of the
Phoenicians were only a theme of Roman and Greek propaganda.

Most
interesting is the contribution by the editor of the volume himself,
dealing with "Multi-Dimensional Group Definition in the Landscape of Rural
Greece" (28-42). Despite the existence of several studies about the
importance of symbols denoting a specific culture in border areas,
archaeological data have not yet been used to explore "group identity and
interaction at the margins of territory" in ancient Greece (29). Spencer
examines rural towers and enclosures on Lesbos, which are concentrated in
the center and the western part of the island. Nine of them are built with
isodomic Hellenistic masonry, nineteen with the polygonal "Lesbian"
masonry, an expensive 'prestige style' of the Archaic period. Most of
these towers are 6-12 km distant from the nearest polis, and many of them
lack an enclosure or features like mills, cisterns etc., which means that
they had neither an agricultural nor a military purpose. This leads to the
question: who in the polis had interest and means for such investments in
the hinterland? As Spencer shows (37 ff.), it was probably the elite of
the asty enacting a kind of "peer emulation", combined with an
effort to emphasize links between chora and asty; on the
other hand there was also an "inter-polis side" of this phenomenon,
playing out a rivalry between the Lesbian poleis which vied for the best
land against their neighbours.

In "Tomb Cult and Hero Cult. The
Uses of the Past in Archaic Greece" (43-63), James Whitley explores the
symbolic values of tomb cult, various possibilities of its interpretation
and the links between change of cult and social changes; he shows (49 ff.)
the possibilities and limits an ancient society had in using the past to
legitimize the present. The paper stresses that an anthropological "theory
of the past" is still only in its beginnings (51), and that the definition
of "hero" and "hero cult" is still far from clear. Against a rigid
distinction between of heroes of epic and heroes of cult W. convincingly
draws up a more differentiated list of major heroes of epic poetry, lesser
named heroes (e. g. Phrontis, Akademos), real, i.e. historical,
individuals (e. g. Harmodios and Aristogeiton) and anonymous figures of
only local significance. According to W., the hero cult of the classical
period cannot simply be projected backwards to the much lesser known
circumstances of early Archaic Greece; very probably the cults springing
up around the Mycenean tombs in the eighth century were not originally
conceived as hero cults but as cults to a previous race (60); still, the
idea of the epic hero itself may have had a significant effect on mortuary
practices of the archaic period (cf. the tomb at Marathon).

In
attempting to show "that settlement histories, whether they concern the
Bronze Age or the present day, are ultimately palimpsests of local actions
and decisions -- a record of each group's differing aims in the use of
space
and the imposition of boundaries in the landscape -- rather than
reflecting
global processes" (65), Kyriacos Lambrianides' paper "Present-day Chora on
Amorgos and Prehistoric Thermi on Lesbos. Alternative views of communities
in transition" (65-88) presents an interesting and original approach. He
traces the historical development of the Amorginian village of Chora since
about 1800 and of the settlement of Thermi, the second site of the Troadic
culture after Troy itself (72). As the history of Chora shows, changes in
a traditional, pre-industrial society are mostly the result of actions at
the individual level, so that there is no need to invoke a 'macro-scale
process' at a place like Thermi in order to explain the developments
documented in the archaeological record (86).

Lisa Nevett examines
"The Organisation of Space in Classical and Hellenistic Houses from
Mainland Greece and the Western Colonies" (89-108), an area little
enlightened by literary sources; her underlying assumption is that the
structuring of domestic space is conditioned not only by practical and
economic reasons but also by patterns of social interaction and by the
cultural norms and expectations of society.2
She examines many houses in Greece, Sicily and Southern Italy which
show -- notwithstanding substantial variation of detail -- a "consistent
pattern of domestic spatial organisation", namely a single entrance from
the street, a dominant court and the restriction of sight-lines, which
suggests a conscious regulation of social relations between the house and
the outside world (107), in particular between women and unrelated male
visitors (94).

Karen Stears' article "Dead Women's Society:
Constructing female gender in Classical Athenian funerary sculpture"
(109-131) is primarily based on the methodology of semiotics (110 f.) and
focused on the portrayal of women on grave stelai. Examinations of the
development of classical stelai (113 ff.), age categorisation (123 f.),
occupations, and qualities lead to the conclusion that death was "at the
very centre of Athenian life" (128), but also that the reliefs -- as they
were placed in highly visible topographical positions -- served above all
to
display the signs of status, wealth, age categories and gender roles; all
of which is true, but not a totally new finding.3 Stears believes that the reliefs "may reflect the
... reality of female life less obliquely than the female ... characters
of tragedy and comedy" (129): this, however, remains open to question, in
the light of the highly stereotyped images (and epigrams) on the stelai
and the depictions of women, which are generally shown without any signs
of age and presented in a rather restricted number of typical patterns
(bidding farewell to their husband, together with slave and baby, or with
a slave tending a small box to her) which didn't change for a long time.

Lin Foxhall's "Monumental Ambitions: The significance of posterity
in Greece" (135-149) distinguishes between "human time", a time span of
three or four generations, and "monumental time", which transcends the
temporal limits of human (oral) memory and approaches the 'permanent'
realm of legend through various means (e.g. poetry and the
monumentalisation of the Athenian polis in the Parthenon), and tries to
say something about the relationship between these two concepts and their
significance. The idea looks quite original, but one cannot help but feel
that solid archaeological evidence here is sometimes neglected in favour
of theory: Funerary periboloi, e.g., may have been in possession of an
oikos for only three to four generations (134), but in any case they were
carefully restored after 338 and still in use later; one cannot flatly
state that Greek art did not individualise people before the fourth
century (140);4 "authenticity" was indeed
not an important issue for Greek artists (144 ff.), nevertheless the level
of self-confidence and self-reflection of artists was already very high in
Classical Greece, as is shown by many theoretical/philosophical treatises
written by artists about their work and by the favours and prices they
could obtain.5 Individuality certainly
starts earlier than this paper suggests. Foxhall's perception of the
historians Herodotus and Thucydides is open to the gravest doubts: in
light of the wealth of archaeological evidence which confirms Herodotus,
this author should be taken more seriously as a historian (133. 139); and
when she states Thucydides' achievement as "to transform the living
present into a ... permanent monument for posterity" (146), she misjudges
(and neglects) his very explicit didactic intentions (as expressed in
1.22.4).6

The discussion of
theories, methods and models, which started in the Sixties in anthropology
and prehistory, was carried over into classics above all by A.
Snodgrass,7 but barely noticed in
German-speaking archaeology. This "New Archaeology" seeks not to classify
objects and findings for their own sake, but to reconstruct historical
contexts and social processes; topics like ethnical identity,
gender-related work, and instrumentalisation of the past (cf. Spencer,
Introduction 2 f.) are important. In some of the papers discussed above
there is a lurking danger of simplification in confronting theoretical
models with very complex historical realities and traditions; nevertheless
the new approaches undertaken in this volume provide new approaches to
areas of ancient life which up to now have been little explored (being not
reflected in ancient literature). It is to be wished, therefore, that this
book will motivate more traditional archaeology to face up to the
challenge and widen its areas of discussion.

NOTES

2. In the last
ten
years these issues have aroused greater interest among German-speaking
archaeologists, as is shown by the second, revised edition of W. Hoepfner
and E. L. Schwandner, Haus und Stadt im klassischen Griechenland
(1994).

6. One may indeed wonder how she can declare that
Thucydides "redefines
the human deeds of his own time as 'legendary'", when in her quotation of
1.22.4 (only a few lines below) Thucydides himself tells us "that the
facts described are not legendary". It even seems ironic that, although
Foxhall states that lasting memories can be achieved only through spoken
words (141f.), her own footing in these (Greek) words seems rather
insecure: Her translation of Herodotus' first sentence has a very clumsy
beginning (137), she persists in calling the Stoa Poikile Poikilos (139.
146. 148), and the name forms "Aeschylos" (139) and "Oedipos" (145) are
not only awful hybrids, but in the second case actually incorrect.

7. Cf. A. Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece.
The
present state and future scope of a discipline (Berkeley/Los
Angeles/London 1987); also I. Hodder (ed.), Archaeological Theory in
Europe. The last three decades (London 1991).